The Alan Parsons Project releases its fifth album, The Turn Of A Friendly Card, including the hit singles “Time” and “Games People Play”. 
Of all the Project albums of the 70s, this album has my favorite theme: chance, luck, gambling and losing it all. While this may not sound like terribly rich source material for a whole album, it proves to be more than enough for the Project. The interpretations rang form the literal – fame, fortune, or the loss thereof – to odes on greed, gambling addiction, and luck in areas other than the purely monetary. For those of you who remember vinyl LPs, the collection of songs that form what I used to know as “side two” (i.e. from “The Gold Bug” onward) 
is an example of just how amazing a well-planned and constructed concept album can sound. From this album also comes the singles “Games People Play” and “Time”, though I’ve always felt they pale in comparison to the cycle of songs that surround the title track toward the end of the album.
- May Be A Price To Pay (4:58)
- Games People Play (4:21)
- Time (5:05)
- I Don’t Wanna Go Home (5:03)
- The Gold Bug (4:35)
The Turn of a Friendly Card suite:
- The Turn of a Friendly Card, part one (2:44)
- Snake Eyes (3:16)
- The Ace of Swords (2:58)
- Nothing Left To Lose (4:08)
- The Turn of a Friendly Card, part two (3:22)
Released by: Arista
Release date: 1980
Total running time: 40:30